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View Full Version : Yurt in CT Seg 22 is $20 this year, hope to open it soon



grayj
05-26-2012, 12:17
The Colorado Trail Friends Memorial Yurt in CT Segment 22 hopefully will be repaired and open soon. Expect this summer's $20 fee per night per individual.

The CTF Yurt is owned and operated by Hinsdale Haute Route, a Colorado Non-profit Corporation and an all volunteer organization. It has been operated as a winter only, ski hut since 1995. Contributions by several CT founders, including Gudy Gaskill, paid for the materials for initial construction.

Initially, our Special Use Permit called for annual set up and then take down of the yurt and furnishings after each winter season. Several years ago, that became too much for the volunteers to accomplish and we stopped taking it down in the summer. Since we were not technically Permitted for summer use we left it open for who ever stopped by. It became obvious from the log book in the yurt that more people were using it in the summer than in the winter

The Rio Grande National Forest granted permission for summer use last year and we relocated the yurt to a large new deck a quarter mile NE of the old location. We placed it close to a stand of trees for wind protection, but we placed it too close. The wind snapped a top off of one of those trees last winter and damaged the roof. The yurt is not currently set up. We hope to have repairs completed and the yurt set up again (farther from the trees this time) by late June.

We will be asking a $20 per person per night fee when it is operational again. Registration receipts with detachable payment envelopes, similar to those the Forest Service and BLM use for their campgrounds, are located at the yurt. We do accept IOUs for those hikers that are not traveling with cash or checks. The yurt sleeps up to 8. If it has reached capacity or if it has been reserved, the No Vacancy sign may be up. The whole yurt can be reserved for $110 per night and individual advance reservations can be made by calling Hinsdale Haute Route at 970-944-2269 or emailing Jerry at [email protected] (https://webmail5.userservices.net/reademail.php?id=123141&folder=Inbox&[email protected]).

We will try to post our reservation calendar online soon at www.hinsdalehauteroute.org (https://webmail5.userservices.net/parse.php?redirect=http://www.hinsdalehauteroute.org). We will also post a calendar at the yurt when it is repaired and try to keep it as current as possible. However, running up there to update the calendar every time there is an individual reservation will probably not be happening. The other advantage to booking a reservation ahead is that we supply the combination to the outhouse to those folks.

The CTF Yurt is located in a beautiful spot on the Continental Divide just below the high point of the Colorado Trail. The log book shows that it has been a welcome respite for many a soggy hiker who was thankful for a chance to dry out their gear while sleeping in a warm yurt on a bunk. The winter users and the volunteers have brought it this far. With the help of the summer users we can make the CTF Yurt better and remain available for back country users in all seasons.

Cookerhiker
05-26-2012, 15:54
I stayed there (http://www.trailjournals.com/entry.cfm?id=363186) on last year's CT thruhike and was gratified for the bunk, stove, and keeping dry when the early evening thunderstorm hit. I also inadvertently contributed to the hiker box (more accurate to say I started one) when I mistakenly left behind my bag of grains - rice, couscous, quinoa - not to discover such until the next night's camp 14 miles later at the lake in Segment 23.

There wasn't a fee last year, was there?